Photo: BAM Media

Winterbottom penalised at Clipsal

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Despite setting the second-quickest time in a nail-biting Clipsal 500 top ten shoot out today, Mark Winterbottom will start ninth for tomorrow’s first V8 Supercar race of the year.
The Orrcon Steel FPR Falcon driver recovered from a testing practice session earlier in the day, when he was lapping 15th fastest, to set blistering pace in this afternoon’s qualifying.

Officials penalised him for using too much curb on the entry to turn four in his one-lap shoot out, however, relegating him to ninth. At the time of writing, V8 Supercars was reviewing the decision in light of similar offences committed by competitors on the exit of the corner.

Steve Richards’ Castrol FPR Falcon also made great improvements from the early practice session, just missing out on the top ten shoot out by one place.

Mark Winterbottom said: “That’s the first time I’d done that at turn four because I was worried about turning, but the car turned better than I thought. I’m obviously very disappointed and I’m hoping the review will come out in my favour. As far as I’m concerned, we’re not ninth, we’re second fastest and ninth by default.

“The car is massively improved since this morning and that’s the most important thing. To go from 18th to battling for pole is a great job by everyone. It just goes to show that we’re not looking for a lot when we have problems; just find a little bit here and there and it gets you back up the front.

“It’s a lot easier to pass here than anywhere else; you can win from anywhere here because it’s such a long race. If one guy has a long fuel stop you can get from eighth to the lead so we’re not looking for a lot really.”

Steve Richards had this to say: “We had to improve for qualifying after a pretty disappointing practice. We just continued to make general changes, particularly to the suspension, to improve the car. With the last change I think we might have taken a little step backwards and we came up short in the second session of qualifying.

“If you look at what the times were in that second session, 1:21.9 was on the cusp of the top ten and if you didn’t improve you didn’t make it unfortunately for us. The aim is still to finish in the top five though; it all comes down to what happens in the last 20 laps of the race. I don’t think there’s much in it.”